Any Given Sunday

Emp had this to say on my last post:

I'm mildly amused that back the huge underdog blindly is actually a "winning strategy". Probably has to do with punter psychology. I read somewhere that backing anything which goes to 1000 in play (excluding in play horse-race markets with front-running) generated pretty decent returns.

While I don't touch horse-racing, it has long been a strategy of mine in other sports to take advantage of people willing to back at prices that are too short in-play as I have written before. Football prices move predictably, so the strategy doesn't work there, but in true trading sports, it's a long-term winning strategy. 

Watch the price bounce back after a touchdown or after a basketball team goes on a run. Of course this won't work if the touchdown scoring team is up big with little time left, but if the pre-game underdog scores first, greed drives the price too low, before the fear kicks in and the price bounces back. Similarly in basketball, you need enough time left in the game. A run leading to a lead of 20 points with 10 seconds left isn't going to do you much good, but a lead in the teens or even twenties with enough time left is an opportunity. The key is that you don't need the lay to go on to win. You simply need the price to bounce and you can lock in your profit after a tick or two or let it run as your risk tolerance allows. Lay £10,000 at 1.01 (risk £100) and a bounce of one tick to 1.02 allows you plenty of options to lock in a decent profit.